The ancient day’s “Railway Guide” “side by side with our Table, and it will be as graphite next to a diamond: both consist of the same element carbon yet how eternal, how transparent is the diamond (…)”
Table of Hours
Twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen, and from twenty-one to twenty-two, the single mighty organism breaks up into separate cells; these are the Personal Hours designated by the Table.
I have read and heard many incredible things about those times when people still lived in a free, i.e., unorganized, savage condition. But most incredible of all, it seems to me, is that the state authority of that time, no matter how rudimentary, could allow men to live without anything like our Table, without obligatory walks, without exact regulation of mealtimes, getting up and going to bed (…)
And wasn’t it absurd that the state could leave sexual life without any semblance of control? … Totally unscientific, like animals. (..) fail to establish such thing as our Maternal and Paternal Norms.
(…) handed in my pink coupon, and received the certificate permitting me to lower the shades. This right is only granted on sexual days. At all other times we live behind our transparent walls that seem woven of gleaming air we are always visible, always washed in light. We have nothing to conceal from one another. Besides, this makes much easier the difficult and noble task of the Guardians. For who knows what might happen otherwise? Perhaps it was precisely those strange, opaque dwellings of the ancients that gave rise to their paltry cage psychology.
One of the ancient sages said a clever thing accidentally of course. “Love and Hunger rule the world.” Ergo: to conquer the world, man must conquer its rulers. Our forebears succeeded, at heavy cost, in conquering Hunger; I am speaking of the Great Two Hundred Years’ War, the war between the city and the village (…) But in the year 85 before the founding of One State, our present food, a petroleum product, was developed. True, only 0.2 of the earth’s population survived the war.
Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness? And what sense would there be in the countless sacrifices of the Great Two Hundred Years’ War, if reasons for envy still remain in our life?
Naturally, having conquered Hunger (algebraically, by the sum total of external welfare), the One State launched its attack against the other ruler of the world called Love. And finally this elemental force was also subjugated, organized and reduced to mathematical order. (…) “Each number has a right to any other number, as to a sexual commodity.”
Since then it has been only a matter of technology. You are carefully examined in the laboratories of the Sexual Department; the exact content of sexual hormones in your blood is determined, and you are provided with an appropriate Table of sexual days. After that, you declare that on your sexual days u wish to use number so-and-so, and you receive your book of coupons (pink). And that’s all.
This word has survived only as a poetic metaphor; the chemical composition of this substance is unknown to us.
Clearly, this leaves no possible reasons for envy; the denominator of the happiness fraction is reduced to zero, and the fraction is transformed into a magnificent infinity. And so what to the ancients was the source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been reduced to a harmonious, pleasant, and useful function of the organism (…) hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it touches.
“Liberation?” Amazing, the extent to which criminal instincts persist in human nature. (…) when man’s freedom equals zero, he commits no crimes. The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.
Sth similar was experienced by the ancients during their “religious services”. But they worshipped their own irrational, unknown God; we serve our rational and precisely known one. (…) We offer a sacrifice to our God, the One State, a calm, reasoned, sensible sacrifice.
Every number has to report to the Office of the Guardians within 48 hours.
Membranes: camouflaged, installed on very street to record conversations for the OG.
Everyone who poisons himself with nicotine or alcohol is “ruthlessly destroyed” by the One State.
Dream = Irrational
Irrational values were growing thru everything solid, familiar, three-dimensional, and instead of firm, polished planes I was surrounded by gnarled, shaggy things…
“I am saddened to see that, instead of a harmonious and strict mathematical poem in honor of the One State, I am producing some sort of a fantastic adventure novel.”
The Operational Section: physicians, under the Benefactor. (developed 5 centuries ago)
Gas Bell: torturing tool (a mouse is placed under a glass jar and an air pump rarefies the air inside, serving “a noble end, safeguards the security of the One State, the happiness of millions”)
Man ceased to be a savage only when we had built the Green Wall, when we had isolated our perfect mechanical world from the irrational, hideous world of trees, birds, animals…
à Irrationality is frowned upon and Reason prevails.
Everything great is simple; only the four rules of arithmetic are eternal and immutable. And only an ethic built on the 4 rules can be great, immutable, and eternal. This is the ultimate wisdom, the summit of the pyramid, which people, flushed with perspiration, kicking and gasping, have been climbing for centuries.
Unanimity Day: the “great holiday” (=Easter), annual election of Benefactor. This is entirely unlike the disorderly, disorganized election of the ancients, when the very results of elections were unknown beforehand. Building a state on entirely unpredictable eventualities, blindly, what can be more senseless?
Elections themselves are mainly symbolic. The history of the One State knows of no occasion when even a single voice dared to violate the majestic unison.
MEPHI = Name of the world beyond the Green Wall (ppl wearing fur, hiding in woods)
There r 2 forces: entropy and energy. Entropy: blissful quietude and happy equilibrium (worshipped by “our ancestors, the Christians”). Energy: destruction of equilibrium (“We”).
But the heart is nothing but an ideal pump; compression, shrinkage, the sucking in of fluid by a pump are technical absurdities. It is clear how essentially preposterous, unnatural and morbid are the “loves”, “pities”, and all other nonsense that cause such compressions!
“How can there be a final revolution? There is no final revolution; revolutions are infinite (just as there is no largest number)” (I-330)
IMAGINATION=Sickness-> Triple X-ray to remove imagination-> Great Operation
“Reason must prevail.”
Summary:
The mathematician, Builder of Integral (a spaceship to go onto other planets and conquer them), D-503, his lover 0-90 and poet friend R-13.
This state itself is built with transparent walls (glass), easy for surveillance by the Office of Guardians.
Table of Hours to designate fixed time for activities. Sexual days with pink coupon, sex with any number registered.
He fell for I-330, who wages a revolution against the One State, for the world beyond the Green Wall. Met at Ancient House.
He had dreams which he took that for falling ill since dreams=irrationality.
D-503 and I-330 plans to seize the Integral at 12 after locking all the ppl into the dining room, but the plan failed since the U lady who works at the entrance to register ins and outs of the building, betrayed them (showed the notes to the State).
D-503 had talk with Benefactor, and found out that he was only being used.
He confessed to S, a Guardian officer, yet S was also part of the Mephi.
He went for the Great Operation and gave I-330 in to the One State.
She and the others involved were put to Gas Bell torture and afterwards to the Benefactor’s Machine. D-503 concluded: Reason must prevail.
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